A Mars in the 12th House Interpretation and Parable

People with Mars in the 12th house have read, most often, scary things about this natal position. I have been asked about it a few times. Maybe it’s because I also have a twelfth house Mars, and have naturally had my own cascading and dreamy struggles with it befitting for any 12th house drama – so I also come with a passion to champion (as any Martian would) the supposed underdog, told in interpretation after interpretation that their will is weakened or that they are more likely than others to have addictions or self-destructive tendencies.

This position really only means that the will is aligned (or needing to be aligned) with Spirit or the Universe. The archetype of spirit and spirituality in astrology also correlates to feeling lost, it’s the saint or sinner duality, it’s the homeless man having visions of the divine from the gutter, the drunk scoundrel at a bar in a Russian novel talking about his suffering and how ‘divine’ it all is.

When there is not a good understanding of what this divine will is, the person can feel very lost because they have not found their supported calling yet. If we think to the homeless person having visions on the street, it’s like realizing they are not unemployed from laziness. A person who has visions or a consciousness they don’t know what to do with is a very Piscean/12th house situation. Also depending on how or in what context a person began to access other realms of information, it can have a damaging effect on the the person. This is why the Virgo polarity is important – the discernment aspect. Health. Organizing information. Choosing to align with beneficent forces rather than getting seduced by power for power’s sake, or even magic for magic’s sake (not all magic is created equal).

People with Mars in the 12th house will benefit from guidance from a direct connection to the divine. This means that they simply ask questions and wait for answers. They may find that simply making the connection helps them have the intuition of right action. So instead of feeling lost and misplaced throughout life, they open themselves up to unseen assistance. If a Mars in the 12th house person can befriend and be friends with the universe, they are better off.

Mars in the 12th house people or Mars in Pisces people almost need a belief in higher power to feel vital in their life force. They are learning in this life that nothing in temporal existence is permanent, and so they are more likely than other people to feel their resources or sources dwindling away if they become attached to what we call “defacto Gods” – where they inadvertently worship something that is not actually ultimate, like thinking that your (insert something here) has all the answers or all the things to promise you satisfaction in life.

Mars in the 12th people have powerful wills when they are aligned with universal good. The strange thing is that it’s easy to resist that – to think that doing this is at one’s own sacrifice. (Martyr extremity) Ultimately Mars in the 12th house people can be very humbled when they discover that aligning themselves with universal good actually brings them deeper happiness than what they imagined they could get before, from chasing what was always elusive to them.

So without further ado, this is the parable. Not of a 12th house Mars, but a Moon/NN in Pisces individual. (Pisces/Neptune/12th house are of the same archetype.) The story however, has a definite Mars in the 12th house trajectory. It is about Buckminster Fuller as depicted by Robert Greene in Mastery, beginning page 40:

As a very young child, Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) knew that he experienced the world differently from others. He was born with extreme nearsightedness. Everything around him was a blur, and so his other senses developed to compensate for this – particularly touch and smell. Even after he was prescribed glasses at the age of five, he continued to perceive the world around him with more than just his eyes. He had a tactile form of intelligence.

Fuller was an extremely resourceful child. He once invented a new kind of oar to help propel himself across the lakes in Maine where he spent his summers delivering mail. Its design was modeled after the motion of jellyfish, which he had observed and studied. He could envision the dynamics of their movement with more than his eyes – he felt the movement. He reproduced this motion in his newfangled oar and it functioned beautifully. During such summers he would dream of other interesting inventions – these would be his life’s work, his destiny.

Being different, however, had its painful side. He had no patience for usual forms of education. Although he was very bright and had been admitted to Harvard University, he could not adapt to its strict style of learning. He skipped classes, began to drink, and led a rather bohemian lifestyle. The officials at Harvard expelled him twice – the second time for good.

After that he bounced from job to job. He worked at meatpacking plant and then, during World War I, he secured a good position in the navy. He had an incredible feel for machines and how their parts worked in concert. But he was restless, and could not stay too long in one place. After the war he had a wife and a child to support, and despairing of ever being able to care for them properly, he decided to take a high-paying position as a sales manager. He worked hard, did a decent job, but after three months the company folded. He had found the work extremely unsatisfying, but it seemed that such jobs were all he could expect from life.

Finally, a few months later, a chance appeared out of nowhere. His father-in-law had invented a way of producing materials for houses that would end up making them more durable and better insulated, and at a much lower cost. But the father could not find any investors or anyone willing to help him set up a business. Fuller thought his idea brilliant. He had always been interested in housing and architecture, and so he offered to take charge of implementing this new technology. He put everything he could into the effort and was even able to improve on the materials to be used. Fuller’s father-in-law supported his work, and together they formed the Stockade Building System. Money from investors, mostly family members, allowed them to open factories. The company struggled – the technology was too new and radical, and Fuller was too much of a purist to compromise his desire to revolutionize the construction industry. After five years the company was sold and Fuller was fired as president.

Now the situation looked bleaker than ever. The family had been living well in Chicago on his salary, beyond its means. In those five years he had not managed to save anything. Winter was approaching and his prospects for work seemed very slim – his reputation was in tatters. One evening he walked along Lake Michigan and thought of his life up until then. He had disappointed his wife, and he had lost money for his father-in-law and his friends who had invested in the enterprise. He was useless at business and a burden to everyone. Finally he decided upon suicide as the best option. He would drown himself in the lake. He had a good insurance policy, and his wife’s family would take better care of her than he had been able to. As he walked toward the water, he mentally prepared himself for death.

Suddenly something stopped him in his tracks – what he would describe later as a voice, coming from nearby or perhaps within him. It said, “From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to the Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experience to the highest advantage of others.” Never having heard voices before, Fuller could only imagine it as something real. Stunned by these words, he turned away from the water and headed home.

On the way there he began to ponder the words and to reassess his life now in a different light. Perhaps what he had perceived moments earlier as his mistakes were not mistakes at all. He had tried to fit into a world (business) in which he did not belong. The world was telling him this if he only listened. The Stockade experience was not at all a waste – he had learned some invaluable lessons about human nature. He should have no regrets. The truth was that he was different. In his mind he imagined all kinds of inventions – new kinds of cars, houses, building structures – that reflected his unusual perceptual skills. It struck him, as he looked around, that people suffered more from sameness, the inability to think of doing things differently, than from non-conformity.

He swore that from that moment on he would listen to nothing except his own experience, his own voice. He would create an alternative way of making things that would open people’s eyes to new possibilities. The money would eventually come. Whenever he thought of money first, disaster followed. He would take care of his family, but they would have to live frugally for the moment.

Over the years, Fuller kept to this promise. The pursuit of his peculiar ideas led to the design of inexpensive and energy-efficient forms of transportation and shelter (the Dymaxion car and Dymaxion house), and to the invention of the geodesic dome – a whole new form of architectural structure. Fame and money soon followed.

Hey! I’m so blessed that this article (most likely) showed up on a google search of “Mars in the 12th house”. I’ve gotten to meet quite a few of my Martian comrades this way. Don’t leave without signing up for my mailing list – you’ll receive the weekly forecasts I write straight to your inbox and you’ll be notified of when my courses open for enrollment.

~Sabrina Monarch

(Images:  Hugo Barros, unknown, unknown).

Sabrina Monarch is a soul-centered Evolutionary Astrologer who publishes weekly astrological forecasts. She has been collecting astrological experience for over a decade. She also enjoys yoga, hiking and creative writing. You can subscribe to receive her weekly forecasts by email here.

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